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Friday, May 24, 2013

#563: Morris Cerullo

Morris
Cerullo is a Pentecostal Christian evangelist and a faith healer of the good old
kind. He encourages people with serious illnesses and disabilities to attend
his revival meetings so Jesus can heal them (and he can receive well-deserved financial compensation for letting the sick access his Jesus),
and uses posters of people leaving wheelchairs and crutches to promote his efforts.

Cerullo was an early champion of the Satanism scare,
to the extent that he put up a traveling exhibit dubbed the ”Witchmobile,” in
which horrified spectators and frightened children would see on display various
occult artifacts used for Satanic rituals, such as astrology items, Ouija
boards, and Tarot cards, in order to recognize and combat these nefarious
enemies in their ordinary lives. As late as 1999 Cerullo ran an ad in the UK,
claiming that ”Satanic hordes” occupy ”principal palaces of power in Europe” (and
that homosexuality is an abomination). The campaign was not an unqualified success,
particularly since Cerullo’s faith healing campaigns in the UK had previously
left a trail of death.
Cerullo was subsequently challenged to produce his three best examples of
claimed miraculous healings for scrutiny by a panel of doctors. They were not particularly impressed.
Cerullo has also been expelled from India after his inability to actually heal
people caused a riot (30 000 people apparently showed up to Cerullo’s event, including several
disabled people, and Cerullo rather audaciously just declared that they had all
been healed, something many of them rather obviously felt was inaccurate).

His
evangelical campaigns targeted at the Jewish community have been met with some criticisms as well (Rev Dr Chris Wright, principal of All Nations Christian College, denounced
Cerullo's methods as ”spiritually perverted and pastorally disastrous”).

He may be
most famous, however, for his stint as an amusement park owner, having got his
hands on the PTL Club and Heritage USA amusement park that Jerry Falwell appropriated from Jim Bakker after the latter’s fall from grace. He later lost the park but retained the PTL
television network (currently named ”Inspiration” and run by his son David).

Diagnosis: Raving mad, of course, and sufficiently insane to
jeopardize his own influence. That, of course, doesn’t scare away the most
gullible of the gullible, and he still seems to enjoy a modicum of influence.